Apr. 13: On unfriending and world peace

Like many people, I am in-real-life friends with about half of the people on my Facebook friends list. And, like many people, I have a very loose policy on friending and unfriending. OK, loose-ish.

I know this for sure: I won’t friend anyone I have no connection with whatsoever. Why do people send requests when they don’t have even one friend in common with me? Or an interest, or past, or anything? They’re collectors, I assume—they want to be the Facebook user who has one beeeellion friends. Ugh.

I also know this: it takes a LOT for me to unfriend someone. I’m not talking about the cleaning-up stuff, the I-barely-know-this-person-why-are-they-on-my-list unfriending, but consciously clicking “unfriend” because you are saying I DO NOT LIKE THIS PERSON.

Because, and you know this if you’re even a little bit FB-savvy, if a friend drives you nuts you simply remove them from your feed and voila! You rarely see the things they post. This is the best way to handle people you like and/or are related to but have, say, polar opposite political views. Or they turn out to be the type who needs to constantly share every one of their emotions as they occur. Or you just don’t have the heart to let them know the minutiae of their lives does not really matter to you. These kinds of friends *might* be harmless, but they also might be the people who can mess up your mood in a single post.

“Hide” is a fabulous little housekeeping tool.

Cleaning up my feed makes my visits to Facebook an absolute joy. Well, most the time. Sometimes the people in my feed share bad news. That sucks. But I don’t take it personally. (Ha.)

I avoid unfriending because it’s such a passive-aggressive way to tell someone how I feel. Although I’ve probably been unfriended more times than I know (that fbDefriended app came along long after I joined FB), there have been just a handful of times that I’ve really cared. The first time I was unfriended, I was hurt—it was someone who had become dear to me, and it showed me that we weren’t friends in real life after all. The second time someone unfriended me, I was baffled. It was in response to an exchange of emails about our kids. In talking with mutual friends afterward, we concluded that this woman is cuckoo-crazy—not because she no longer wanted to be friends with me, but because her response to our conversation was so rash… also because she continued to harass me indirectly by telling her kid that I didn’t love mine, and sending nasty letters to the school principal. WHAT!ever.

The third time I was unfriended broke my heart, and I won’t talk about it here.

I’ve got a short but powerful “blocked” list—I don’t see them and they don’t see me. There are three or four people on my list that are there because I don’t want them to find me or the people I love. The others are people I absolutely do NOT want to see when I’m going along my merry Facebook way, enjoying my very filtered feed. La la la la la la life is better if I pretend you don’t exist la la la la la!

I’ve with-malice-and-aforethought unfriended people on Facebook two times. The first time was soon after joining, when the person posted “I’m almost to 1,000 friends! Help me get there!” I clicked that unfriend button soooo hard. Not a fan of the collectors!

The second time was today. I know, I know—passive-aggressive. But, to be fair, the person I unfriended today is a complete asshole.

And yet I still feel like a total shit for the unfriending. I mean, it’s not like I wouldn’t tell this asshole to its asshole face that it’s an asshole, given the opportunity (which brings up an entirely different type of guilt, that it would be so easy for me to say that). I gave this a lot of thought; it verges on the ridiculous that I took it so seriously. While it was the right thing to do to keep my mental state in the she’s-not-going-to-explode range, I have an icky, I’m-a-terrible-person feeling, which is weird because I’m pretty sure the people who have unfriended me haven’t given it a second thought.

Geez. I like life way better when everyone’s getting along and bad stuff doesn’t happen and people are happy and nothing changes and I don’t feel frowny-faced and I don’t do things that make other people frowny-faced and the sky is sunny and blue and I’m thin and gorgeous and I don’t pop the blood pressure cuff. It sucks to pop the blood pressure cuff.

2 comments:

I don't know who has unfriended me, so I assume therefore that no one important to me has done so :)I did have a moment of concern that you had unfriended me, but then realized that if I was reading about it in your FB post I was still safe . . . for now . . .

facts of jen's life

So, who do you think you are? I think I’m Jen. People who don’t know me sometimes call me Jenny. That’s weird.

Tell me about yourself. I was born a small black child, and am now a grown-up, or at least my kids think I am. I’m in my mid-40s and live in the ‘burbs of Portland, Oregon. My husband is Victor, and my kids are Katie and Jack. Read this if you want the real and very long scoop.

Tell me things people might not know about you. I am an ordained minister and can perform marriages. Why no one has asked me to do this for them yet, I do not know. ● At the request of my Disney-hating friend Ed, I got mouse ears embroidered with the name “Satan” and I didn’t even get kicked out of Disneyland. It’s quite possibly the ballsiest thing I’ve ever done. ● I “helped” write this book, published in 2012: You Take it From Here, by Pamela Ribon. My name is in the back, and I’m still geeking out about it. ● I recorded a song in a studio in 1994 and it got local radio play for a few months. At least two times I turned on the radio in the car and my song was playing at that moment—very cool. ● I nearly died from a zit in 1986. I am not making this up. ● Victor and I once appeared on The Tonight Show. Really. If you can find a VCR, I’ll show you the tape.

I read some of your posts and I think you might be an alcoholic. I drink way less than I write about drinking. If I ever STOP talking about booze, then it’ll be time for an intervention.

If you could punch anything or anyone in the face, what/who would it be? Cancer. I was diagnosed with lymphoma in November 2009. I kicked its big fat ugly ass and am in remission now. ● Comic Sans. ● People who won’t take responsibility for their problems—the “I didn’t do anything to deserve this!” attitude. Look in the mirror. That’s who to blame. ● Celebrities who are famous for no reason. Y’know, if we stop looking, they’ll go away... ● Bad grammar and spelling and the dummies who use it.

You seem bitter. Did someone piss in your Cheerios? I’m not bitter. I think unicorns-and-rainbows stuff isn’t very interesting to read, so I tend not to write that way. But also, now you’re being kind of a jackhole.

It seems like no one ever comments on your blog posts. Why is that? Most people comment on the Facebook links. I don’t know why.

What if I want to tell you something? Two ways to reach me: leave a comment on a post, or e-mail me at jenniferTAKETHISPARTOUTmanullang at gmail-dot-com.